Henry David Thoreau

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

How earthy old people become moldy as the grave! Their wisdom smacks of the earth. There is no foretaste of immortality in it. They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.

Experience is in the fingers and head. The heart is inexperienced.

Each thought that is welcomed and recorded is a nest egg by the side of which more will be laid.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

Defeat in itself was part and parcel of the great gambling game of politics. A man who could not accept it and try again was not of the stuff of which leaders are made.

Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.

Croesus said to Cambyses; That peace was better than war; because in peace the sons did bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers did bury their sons.

Every great achievement is the victory of a flaming heart.

Gold will be slave or master.

Life at its noblest leaves mere happiness far behind; and indeed cannot endure it. Happiness is not the object of life: life has no object: it is an end in itself; and courage consists in the readiness to sacrifice happiness for an intenser quality of life.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men around to his opinion twenty years later.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

A lucky person gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they’re about to do and thinks it still matters.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

When the eagles are silent the parrots begin to jabber.